Kael did not remember kindness.
His earliest memory was the sound of his father's belt buckle clinking as it slid free from its loops, the hiss of leather cutting air before it split his skin. The scent of cheap whiskey and unwashed flesh clung to the man like a second skin, his breath ragged with something that wasn't quite anger, it was boredom. The kind that made a man hurt things just to feel something, to momentarily fill the yawning void inside. He was four. The pain was a lesson: the world was pain, and the only response was endurance. Or retaliation.
By six, he had learned to bite through the agony, his small teeth sinking into the inside of his cheek until copper flooded his tongue. The taste was better than the sounds he might have made otherwise. Sounds were weakness. Sounds invited more.
By eight, he had learned to bite back.
The first time, it was a rusted nail hidden in his palm, driven into his father's thigh when the man bent to grab him. The howl that followed was sweeter than anything Kael had ever heard. The beating after was worth it. It taught him the equation.
Pain inflicted could outweigh pain received.
The night he killed his father, it wasn't rage that drove the knife between the man's ribs as he snored in a whiskey stupor. It was curiosity.
Would the blade sink as easily as it did into the stray dogs he practiced on? (Their whimpers had been soft, fading things. Their ribs brittle. Their eyes too trusting.)
Would the old man's blood smell the same?
(It did. And it didn't. It was warmer. Thicker. It made Kael's fingers sticky in a way that lingered long after he wiped them clean. The man didn't scream. He gasped, wet and surprised, his hands fluttering at the wound like confused birds. His knees hit the floor before his face did. Kael watched, head tilted, as the life drained out of him in slow, shuddering waves, the boredom in his own heart untouched.)
He left the body where it fell, took the gun from the nightstand, and walked out into the world with nothing but the clothes on his back and the quiet, unshakable knowledge that violence was the only language that mattered. The only truth. The only thing that filled the emptiness, even if only for a moment.
The night air was cold. The stars were bright pinpricks in an indifferent sky. Somewhere, a dog barked, high and lonely.
Kael felt nothing.
And kept walking.
---
Fate was a lie told by the weak.
Kael didn't believe in it. Not until the day he walked into First National Trust with a .45 tucked into his waistband and a plan to leave with enough cash to vanish forever. The bank was a relic of old money, polished marble floors cold underfoot, gilded teller cages like gaudy birdcages, the sour scent of lemon disinfectant barely masking the copper undertone of human sweat.
The fluorescents hummed like dying insects, casting everything in a sickly, flickering glow. Kael had scouted the place for weeks. Knew the guards' rotations, the manager's cigarette breaks, the blind spots in the security cameras. Efficiency was his creed.
He didn't expect the bank to already be under siege.
He didn't expect her.
Ainar moved like liquid fire given sentience, smooth, relentless, leaving scorch marks of chaos in her wake. She wasn't just robbing the place; she was playing with it. Guards lay slumped at her feet, their throats slit with a precision that bordered on artistry, blood seeping into the grooves between the tiles like dark wine. One man was still twitching, fingers spasming against the stock of his dropped shotgun.
And when she turned toward Kael, her lips curled into a grin that didn't belong on a woman who'd just painted the walls red. Sharp. Predatory. Alive.
"You're not supposed to be here," she mused, tilting her head, her voice honey over broken glass. A challenge. An appraisal.
Kael shot at her. Instinct. Efficiency. Remove the variable.
She laughed.
Not a nervous giggle, not a hysterical shriek, but a full, throaty laugh that bounced off the vaulted ceilings, too vibrant, too alive for a room full of cooling corpses. It was the sound of pure, unadulterated delight in the carnage.
Most people looked at Kael and saw death. They pissed themselves. They begged. They tried to run.
Ainar looked at him like he was entertaining.
It should have pissed him off.
It didn't. It sparked something colder. interest.
The fight that followed was less a battle and more a lethal dance, one where every step could end in a bullet or a blade. She was faster than him, her movements fluid, unpredictable, her strikes landing just shy of lethal, testing, teasing. A knife grazed his ribs; he felt the heat before the pain, the fabric of his shirt splitting like it had been kissed by a razor. He caught her wrist on the backswing, twisted until her bones creaked in protest. The blade clattered to the floor between them, and Kael pressed his gun to her forehead.
For a heartbeat, they stood there, breathing hard, her pulse thrumming against the cold steel barrel. A faint, amused smile still played on her lips.
Then Kael shifted his aim smoothly and shot the guard creeping up behind her, knife drawn.
Ainar blinked. Then her grin widened, fierce and approving. "Well," she said, "that's new."
Kael didn't answer. He holstered his gun, turned his back on her, the ultimate dismissal, the ultimate test, and walked toward the gaping vault door.
She followed. Not like a supplicant, but like a partner claiming her share.
The vault door yawned open, its steel teeth gleaming. Inside, the air was cool and stale, thick with the scent of ink and paper.
Ainar whistled low, a sound of pure avarice, as she ran her fingers over the stacks of bills, her nails, chipped red, like old blood, tapping against the bands.
"You're not greedy," she observed, watching as Kael stuffed his bag with methodical precision, taking only untraceable bills and bearer bonds.
"I'm practical," he corrected, his voice flat.
She smirked, tossing a bundle of hundreds into her own sack like it was candy. "Same thing."
By the time they left, the bank was silent. No witnesses. No loose ends. Just the two of them, weighed down with cash and something neither had words for, a recognition of mirrored voids, a shared understanding of power written in blood. Outside, the street was eerily still, the kind of quiet that comes before a storm. Ainar wiped a smear of blood from her cheek with the back of her hand, smudging it instead of cleaning it. A deliberate mark.
"Ainar," she said as they stepped over the bodies, her eyes locked on his.
He hesitated. The name was a currency he rarely spent. Then: "Kael."
Her smirk deepened. Approval.
The wind picked up, carrying the distant wail of sirens. Kael adjusted the weight of the bag on his shoulder. Ainar tilted her face toward the sound, eyes half-lidded, like a cat savoring the scent of approaching rain. Or chaos.
"Race you to the next one?" she asked, the challenge back in her voice.
Kael didn't smile. His face remained carved stone.
But he didn't say no.
---
They burned through cities like a fever dream of destruction, leaving behind ashes and whispered legends that curdled the blood. Ainar was chaos incarnate, wild, untamed, a storm of laughter and flashing blades, her joy in the mayhem a stark contrast to Kael's glacial precision. He was the shadow with a sniper's patience, the cold calculus behind her wildfire. Together, they were unstoppable, a perfect, terrifying symmetry of annihilation.
He didn't love her in the traditional sense. Kael wasn't capable of that. But he wanted her, in the same way he wanted the adrenaline surge of a perfect kill, the satisfying weight of a gun in his hand, the sharp, clean clarity of a decision made in blood. She was violence wrapped in deceptive silk, all sharp edges and dark promises, and when she touched him, it didn't feel like affection. It felt like recognition. Like looking into a dark mirror and seeing not a reflection, but an answer to the emptiness. A way to make the void resonate, however briefly.
The night he found out she was pregnant, they were in the middle of extracting information from a man who'd tried to double-cross them. The air reeked of sweat, fear, and iron. Dim light flickered over the concrete floor of the abandoned warehouse as Ainar knelt over their victim, her dark hair falling in loose waves around her face, a picture of deadly concentration. She had her knee on his chest, a knife tracing idle, terrifying patterns near his throat, when she suddenly went still. Not from distraction, but from… realization.
Then she laughed, bright, unhinged, the sound echoing off the damp walls like shattering glass. "Huh," she said, pressing a hand flat against her stomach, her fingers smeared with the traitor's blood. "That explains the nausea."
Kael stared at her, his expression unreadable as ever, the pliers in his gloved fingers pausing over the man's trembling hand. He didn't feel joy. He didn't feel fear. He felt… interest. Sharp, cold, analytical.
(What would their child be like?
A fusion. Would it have her terrifying, fluid lethality.
His own ruthless, calculating stillness? Would it flinch at the sound of gunfire, or would it reach for the weapon like it was a rattle, tiny fingers curling around the grip with instinctual ease?
What kind of weapon could they forge together?.)
Ainar wiped her blade clean on the dying man's shirt, her movements languid, almost careless, the fabric darkening instantly. "Don't look so constipated, Kael," she murmured, tilting her head, her eyes gleaming with dark amusement. "It's just a baby."
Then she slit the man's throat, the cut swift and deep, her smile never fading as the life gurgled out of him.
The body sagged, the last breath escaping in a wet gasp. Kael watched, silent, as she stood, stretching like a satisfied predator, her free hand still resting lightly on her stomach. A claim. A promise.
Somewhere in the distance, sirens wailed.
Neither of them moved.
They never did.
---
Ainar bled out on scratchy motel sheets, her fingers twitching around a curse instead of a plea. The air stank of cheap antiseptic and the thick, coppery tang of her life draining away. The flickering neon sign outside cast a sickly, pulsing glow through the thin curtains. She had never been soft, never been gentle, but in that moment, her defiance was a quiet, seething thing, a final act of rebellion against a world that had never loved her back. Her eyes, fierce to the end, locked onto Kael's as the light faded. "I'll come back," the silence screamed. A promise, jagged as the wound tearing her apart.
Somewhere beyond the thin walls, the man she had bound her chaos to was fracturing. The doctor's choked-off screams tangled with the thin, reedy cries of the child Kael clutched in one blood-slicked hand. The doctor had babbled about mercy, about precious life, before Kael silenced him. Permanently. Mercy was a luxury they couldn't afford. Not when shadows whispered of hunters closing in, of debts left unpaid, of a life for this mewling thing that would never be safe. Never be normal.
He didn't know how to be a father.
(He had never had one. Only a lesson in pain and the necessity of retaliation.)
So he became something else instead. He became the Forge Master. The Weapon Smith.
He taught the boy to fight before he could read. To disassemble and reassemble a blindfolded pistol before he could write his name. To kill before he understood what death truly meant. The lessons were brutal, efficient, devoid of warmth. A child's hands were small, but they could learn to hold a knife just as easily as a toy. Doom's first steps were unsteady, but his first lunge with a blade was unnervingly perfect. Kael made sure of it.
The boy didn't cry when Kael deliberately broke his fingers during a disarming drill. (Kael set them himself, his grip unyielding, his voice colder than the winter wind whipping through their latest bolt-hole, "Pain is information. Learn it.") He didn't flinch when Kael backhanded him for missing a shot. (The bruise bloomed purple across his cheek, but his stance never wavered, his eyes already seeking the next target.)
(Good. Weakness got you killed. Sentiment got you buried.)
But sometimes, sometimes, when the boy moved a certain way, pivoting with a sudden, fluid grace that wasn't taught, wasn't his, Kael would pause. There was a rhythm to it, an almost musical lethality, like Ainar dancing barefoot in the rain after a job, her laughter sharp and bright as shrapnel. Doom didn't know where it came from. Kael did.
And for the first time in years, he would remember the sound of her laughter. Not with warmth, but with a cold, sharp pang of… something. An echo in his own emptiness.
(It was worse than forgetting. It was a reminder of the storm he'd lost, now echoing in the weapon he was shaping.)
---
But something had changed within the boy recently. It wasn't just Ainar's ghost in his movements anymore; it was something deeper, darker. Something that made the void inside Kael resonate with a strange, unsettling frequency.
Because Doom moved like her. Like Ainar. But amplified. Distorted.
That shouldn't have been possible. The boy had never known her. She had bled out on the motel bed, cursing the world. And yet there it was. The way he pivoted, weight shifting with a dancer's lethal economy. The way his fingers curled around a blade, delicate and anticipatory before the kill, as if savoring the moment of rupture. Kael had watched Ainar do the same a hundred times.
So why did the boy move like her now, more than ever? Why did the air around him sometimes seem to… hum?
It didn't make sense.
(Should it make him satisfied? Should it make him furious? Should it make him grieve the woman whose ghost seemed to haunt their creation?)
He felt… nothing.
(He felt the cold stirring of anticipation.)
No matter.
Ruin ran in the bloodline. Like a congenital disease.
And Doom was beautiful when he killed.
Not like Kael, no. Kael was a sculptor of death, deliberate, exact, removing pieces with clinical precision until the structure collapsed. Doom was a force of nature, wildfire given flesh. Every movement was raw, unrestrained, a dance of destruction that left the air vibrating in his wake. When Doom fought, it wasn't just death, it was entropy in motion, a hurricane of limbs and blades and teeth.
Yet even though Doom moved with Ainar's terrifying grace and Kael's own ruthless efficiency…
He was something more.
Ainar had been lethal grace. Kael had been absolute control.
But Doom was pure, unadulterated hunger.
Not the slow, savoring kind of a predator confident in its meal. Not the calculated bite of a hunter who knew the hunt ended in blood. No, Doom was the moment after the kill, when the beast forgets to chew, when the frenzy takes over and all that's left is the wet, ragged sound of tearing, the consumption.
He didn't just fight.
He Devoured.
Every strike was a claiming. Every step forward made the earth itself flinch. When he moved, it wasn't just his body; it was the air, the light, the very idea of space bending around him, as if the world had no choice but to yield, to be unmade before his passage. He left husks behind, not corpses.
Kael watched, something dark and possessive coiling in his gut. A cold fire.
This wasn't just Ainar's ghost in the boy's limbs.
This wasn't just Kael's own ruthlessness sharpened to a finer edge.
This was something new. Something ancient. Something primal.
Something utterly, terrifyingly perfect.
And when Doom turned to him, eyes alight not with triumph, but with the cold, bottomless void of the aftermath, Kael did the only thing he could. The only thing that fit.
He smiled. A thin, razor-sharp curve of lips that held no warmth, only the cold satisfaction of a master smith seeing his finest blade finally hold its lethal edge.
The boy would learn.
The world would burn.
And Kael's creation would be the torch.